Gameboy70
Member
Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018 |
quote:
Originally posted by foo fighter
Really? Hmm, that's interesting...because it's just as ugly as ever to me!  Personally, the only hope Linux ever had for achieving any real usability, would have been to license the BeOS UI and layer it over the Linux Kernel. Gnome and KDE are hopeless trainwrecks. Both interfaces are over-beveled and clunky, and I especially love how the UI renders huge beveled buttons to display even the simplest text message, such as "OK" or "Cancel". And the fonts...oh god!, what is with the tacky UNIX style font rendering? Looks like something from 1985. Ever hear of PostScript?
Linux does not equal Gnome and KDE. Those are desktop environments for many Unix derivates. Most of the time, I use nothing more than a window manager like Enlightenment, which is finally lean enough to be useful. Even within the aforementioned desktop environments, changing or eliminating the bevelling of the buttons is trivial. I have major issues with many defaut settings with both intefaces, and the average newbie won't have the patience or the will to correct them, but they are correctable. And although I prefer Gnome to KDE for reasons that aren't relevant to the discussion, the transition from the Windows UI to KDE is relatively minor. Both environments have evolved at a much faster rate than even their advocates would've imagined three years ago, myself included. If the last time you've used them is a year ago (as opposed to just looking at screenshots), you might have a different opinion on the matter.
But yes, the pixmap fonts do suck. It's possible to compile TrueType fonts when building the kernel, but only techies are willing to do that. The larger problem is licensing a proprietary solution. Linux isn't a company, which is its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. If Red Hat and SuSE go out of business, Linux will still be around. But if there's an elegant commercial solution that needs to be licensed, that only threatens to fragment standardization attempts even more than now (hence the debate over TrollTech's QT license, now largely resolved). So the current thrust of development within Gnome (and KDE, I assume), is to develop a non-proprietary font solution, like FreeType.
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Perhaps when Linux adopts a real GUI, then it might become more pervasive. For now it's just a hobbyist OS for hackers, but it's kicking Microsoft's ass in the server market. But as a commercial desktop/workstation OS, it's a lost cause. Linux will never make it onto consumer desktops.
As profit margins for hardware vendors drop asymptotically toward zero, those vendors will look for ways to preserve what little they make. You can only cut staff so much. You can innovate in the design area, like the iMac, but that's taking a risk that can hurt as much as it helps. You can try to move away from the PC arena altogether by turning out internet appliances (this is precisely why IAs were such an industry buzzword last year). Or you can avoid paying the Microsoft tax by using Linux. It's an uphill battle, a very uphill battle, but not a lost cause. Twenty years ago, it was unimaginable that IBM would be the thin shadow of itself it is today.
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In fact, according to the latest market data, Linux desktop usage has actually gone down while Microsoft picked up more market share.
That's news to me, but even giving you the benefit of the doubt, it needs to be pointed out that as long as the code is out there to be used and shared by anyone at anytime, the momentary highs and lows of Linux's "market" share are irrelevant. This is a very fundamental point. Think of the terror many Mac users experienced back in 1997, when Apple was on life support. The future of the OS was entirely dependent on the health, the very existence, of the company. The same is happening right now with Be, which is projected to run out of cash within a matter of months. Even in cases where it's not a matter of life and death, like IBM, the future of the platform depends on management -- as an OS/2 Warp 4 user can attest.
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The Linux bubble burst last year along with the dot coms, and since then it's popularity outside the geek community has been in decline, and many Linux vendors/developers are now facing financial ruin. Face it, it was over-hyped.
And? Exactly how is this different from any business venture? Dot-coms were over-hyped (I know, I was downsized by one, which went out of business two months later) for the same reason: tech companies with young management conjured up valuations based on speculation rather than production. And they forgot -- no, arrogantly defied -- the fundamental rule of business: cash in must exceed cash out. As much as I love a company like Eazel, I don't understand its business model. But that's because I don't see much of a future in software subscription, proprietary or open source.
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Any hope the OS has for making inroads onto commercial desktops (especially consumer desktops) will go out the window as soon as Windows XP hits the market. The only ace in the hole the open source community has, is whether or not Microsoft will be broken up. If that happens, then all bets are off, and god only knows what that outcome will bring. As for me, I will immediately migrate to Macs.
The hype is cyclical: we see Linux hype with each major Linux release; the same goes for Windows. Microsoft won't be broken up (ultimately), Linux will carry on. Because Linux isn't proprietary, it's not vulnerable to the zero-sum game that threatens the likes of Apple and Be. Microsoft's success doesn't equal Linux's failure, so Linux (and BSD) remains a persistent threat, even if MS bought up every Linux company on the planet tomorrow. The code belongs to the people.
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I keep hearing the same argument being played out over..and over. The open source advocates always believe that when KDE version x.1 or Gnome version X.X hits the market, it's all over for Microsoft and Apple. Sorry guy's, it ain't gonna happen.
KDE and Gnome are less than four years old. A year may be an eon in internet time, but let's not forget that Windows 3.x was seven years in the making. I personally don't recall anyone saying that the next versions of those environments would kill MS or Apple. Most people just hang their hopes on the next version finally delivering the usability that irons out the kinks they have in their own user experience. I believe in evolution, not revolution. It was trade unions, not Marxists, that won the eight hour work day. Optimism within the bounds of realism adds up. Everything counts in large amounts.
Every month, I participate in a Linux "installfest" and help people get Linux onto their PCs. Most people at these events install Linux out of curiosity, not to "stick it to The Man." When you interact with these newbies in person, it's extremely rare to hear anything derogatory toward Microsoft, contrary to what people might assume from reading sites like Slashdot. It's a much more communal atmosphere. The nature of debates on "discussion" groups seems to polarize issues to ridiculous extremes, so that the smallest criticism of X leads to an inevitable diatribe against Y.
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The truth is, the mainstream computing environment is stuck squarely on Windows. For example, look at the creative/design field, which I work in....why do you think that Adobe and Macromedia don't port all their apps to Linux? Because no one would want them. There is a certain culture that exists within the graphic/design/publishing industry, which is still very heavily Mac oriented, but also fixed to Windows. If Macromedia offered Dreamweaver/Fireworks/Flash to Linux, it would be like throwing a big party and no one shows up. Adobe ported FrameMaker over to Linux some time ago, and since then it has gone no where. Windows is here to stay. Macs will continue to be the preferred choice for graphics design and publishing. Linux will continue to kick MS around in the server arena, but on the desktop? Nope.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem. The culture doesn't exist because the apps aren't there, and vice versa. Steve Jobs' genius was to spot a killer app for the Mac, desktop publishing, at a time when DOS machines were busy crunching spreadsheets. Even five years ago, it was hard to get many Macromedia and Adobe products for Windows. Things change. Right now, there's a hugh vacuum in the design area for Linux users. Linux developers are still refining office productivity solutions. There are a lot of home users out there who do virtually nothing beyond using word processors and accessing the net. That's the first rung of the Linux/OSS market. Publishing and design tools will follow with time and effort. I can still remember when the phrase "word processor" was virtually nonexistent in Linux culture -- that was 1996. Now there are several.
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But what really aggravates me is how clueless the hardcore Linux community is about real world computing. The fact is, the vast majority of PC users don't care about other Operating Systems.
Geeks are geeks, regardless of the particular platform they evangelize. As for myself, I never tell anyone (who's not already motivated) to use Linux, because I don't think it's "there" yet (it seems you agree) for the average user. Technologies migrate from geek cults to the mainstream either through a revolutionary "killer" application (VisiCalc) or through gradual improvements in usability and cost/benefit ratios (the pocket calculator). And you're right: PC user's don't care about operating systems. That's even more true for handhelds, which is why geeks' frustration with Palm's slowly evolving OS doesn't translate to the masses. The same is true of the iMac, which was flamed (by geeks, of course) for its underwhelming specs, but offered a revolutionary design. So while Alan might not be excited by the m505, I think it will sell by the truckload.
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Don't believe me? Go to Best Buy or Circuit City and look at all the luddites buying HP Pavilions and Compaq Presarios. Do you think these poeple plan on taking their new PCs home to wipe out Windows and replace it with Linux? And as human nature follows, once they become familiar with Windows they don't want to learn something new, so that's where they will stay. That's going to be Apple's greatest challenge. How do you convert the masses of PC users into Mac users? I think it's a hopeless cause, but I wish Apple all the luck in the world. I'm all for variety of choice, and competition. Which we seem to have little of these days...thanks to Microsoft!
Every platform has it's niche. Linux will remain dominant on Servers and embedded devices (think Tivo), and continue to be somewhat popular with geeks. But for all intents and purposes...the Penguin has left the igloo!
As you say, every platform has its niche. Apple's mature enough to realize that it's unnecessary to convert the masses of PC users into Mac users, which is why it doesn't sell $500 white boxes. Wintel sells hamburgers; Apple sells steaks. You get what you pay for and pay for what you get.
As for Linux, its main obstacle is Microsoft's OEM licensing stick, which bludgeons every competitor's attempt to get its product preinstalled (hence the immortal words of at least one MS sales rep to an OEM three years ago: "Bill is not happy with you!") on the hard drives of Dell, Gateway and Compaq. Unfortunately the thrust of the antitrust trial focused on the browser issue, which misses the root of all Microsoft's "evil" entirely. Be tried to get around the MS license prohibition by creating a "personal edition" of BeOS that resides and launches from within Windows, but that strategy was a day late and a dollar short: it was implemented when Linux hype (and stock prices) peaked.
At any rate, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Linux.
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04-14-2001 06:55 PM
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